(II) Deliberate

91 (II) Deliberate

Adam was screaming now. The people flinched away. Adam blinked, realizing the threat he'd just levied. The threat he just levied on all the slaves, on all the innocent people, on everyone who didn't even have anything to do with this. But what choice did he have? He needed to keep Shiv alive no matter what. He couldn't just let him die. He wouldn't survive the shame of it.

"You are not going off to the other side! Do you hear me?" Adam cried. He seized Shiv by a short crop of hair. "Do not die!"

Shiv barely suppressed a whimper, but then a mocking smile actually crept over his twitching face. "Is that some kind of order, ?"

"Yes! And it is a command. Do not disobey me. Do not die. Drain from them. Drain from any of them if you do pass. I'll be back. I need to go… go…”

Shiv grunted and hissed with pain. "Uva… Go find Uva."

And with Shiv's blessing, Adam shot off. He still had worry inside his gut, but Uva… he didn't know where she was. In the chaos, he lost track of her. She left to help Shiv. He felt her mind peel away from his as she cast herself into the entity's consciousness.

Gods, diving into an eldritch entity's consciousness. He hoped she wasn't broken. He hoped she wasn't insane. If she went, then there who else to protect them from enemy Psychomancers? Who else would question his plans and make deadpan remarks at him? What would happen to the disgusting romantic overtures that kept happening around him? How would he face Shiv? Ikki? The Composer? Any of the others?

How would he face himself?

If Shiv died… If Uva died… If both of them were gone, if he couldn't save either of them... A weight of creeping despair settled inside Adam.

he intoned. He prayed directly to the architect of his strength and misery. He prayed to a thing that didn't speak to them aside from notifications and blessings of power bestowed upon their very souls. he cried internally.

And as if to taunt him and to mock his declaration, rather than sending him anything useful, it displayed a few special notifications:

Lord Scorn has noticed the act of terrorism inflicted upon his home.

The Lords of Law have noticed your usurpation of Gate Theborn.

The Stranger has noticed your murder of its offspring.

The Stranger cries—

Adam screamed so loud, the last notification shattered before his eyes. He cried out as he clutched his head. Then, there was the sound of something apart. Adam turned his gaze as something started slithering up into reality from the corner of his eyes.

Mana boundaries to semi-Integrated dimensions thinned.

Adam muttered. What in the Broken Moon did that mean? And then he felt something.

The bottom of Gate Theborn was little more than a crater. So much had been destroyed, and the destruction ran so deep that the third gateway wasn't even truly connected to anything anymore. It was just a portal hovering there in the air, a flat plate of shimmering dimensionality mana. However, a tinge of Animancy-blue began to leak through, and then that tinge faded. A sprout of darkness and other colors extended out from the gateway to Vulketh. The sprout slithered free, and along its length, new colors began to bloom. New organs, limbs, and eyes. Eyes like those possessed by the Recollector grew across the world like cancerous smears. Just seeing it made his sanity reel.

But Adam, more than terrified, was utterly exhausted by this bullshit. Though his mind shook, his frustration hit a boiling point first.

"Come the fuck ON!" he roared at the world—at the System in particular. “I JUST FELLING KILLED ONE ELDRITCH ENTITY! DO I LOOK LIKE I CAN DO ANOTHER?!”

Something tore its way into Gate Theborn, starting from the Vulketh Gateway. The world ripped like a piece of paper as it traveled upward. The many eldritch eyes unlatched from where they were, and through a rift that revealed countless drifting colors all beyond Adam's comprehension, emerged a colossal shape. He couldn't call it solid, he couldn't call it fluid, he couldn't even call it gaseous. It felt like it was all three at the same time, or whatever the entity wanted it to be. Its body had many eyes as well. They glided along its form, not so different from the eyes that moved on the hand-head of the Recollector, but these eyes were larger, they glowed brighter, and they peered right at Adam.

Worse, this new entity just kept flooding forth. It dwarfed all architecture within the gate as it slid over into the world.And with it came a flood of colors. Colors that didn’t belong in this world. Colors that infected reality and twisted the very fabric of existence. It was like the world was a canvas, and the colors were ink. A new horizon was being painted before Adam, and it wasn’t of Gate Theborn. Or maybe it was simply unmaking parts of Gate Theborn and replacing it with parts from elsewhere.

From the .

the entity whispered. Adam’s stomach twisted. He puked while flying as the pitch of the words clawed at part of his mind.

More and more of the entity pulled through the massive, widening chasm. The entire middle of Gate Theborn was now torn open, and there was still more of the entity coming through. Its body, if it could be even described as such, was ridged with gleaming teeth that sang, and between those revolving jaws were eyes. So many drifting eyes. So many colorful eyes. So many eyes, all staring at Adam. And then came the hands, so many hands, breaching out from it. Hands that resembled the Recollector’s head.

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Existence quivered. Adam felt madness close in. He also just sighed and started firing his Spellstring.

Arrows charged with lightning, force, fire, frost, mind, and more vanished into the entity. As he fired, he prepared to cast his Divination mana—he still had to find Uva. Then, a pillar of light erupted a kilometer away. A spiral of colors rose into the air, and Adam flinched back with a cry of pain as his mind reeled.

Adam's divination began to scream incoherent details at him. The System responded by dumping broken text into his mind, and as more of the Outside leaked into Gate Theborn. He tried to keep his focus away from everything that was happening—and that’s when he noticed Uva hovering within the pillar of light. In fact, the pillar was formed around her, bleeding forth from her gaze. Because of course it was. Because a nightmarish being residing in your eyes could only end poorly. But what the bloody hells were they supposed to do otherwise?

Then, as the pillar of light churned and changed into a tide of shifting colors, a voice came. the thing that used Uva's voice called out,

The entity moved. Or rather, it didn’t move at all. Instead, it pulled at the world as if space were a carpet, and Adam was a bug stuck to the material.

the thing within Uva spat.

From the rising pillar of brightness emerged another entity. This one resembled a mess of feathered serpents all coiling around each other. Its appearance reminded Adam of a monster he saw in one of his classes—the orochi. They were of a hue Adam couldn't even name, and the color constantly changed. They didn't have so many eyes on them, but there were tongues that flaked and licked at the world, leaving scars in space. Adam’s thoughts were empty. He moved on instinct alone.

He beat his wings harder and forward as he lurched closer and closer toward the Stranger. He was fast, but without Dimensionality, there was no way he could outpace the Stranger’s tugs. Especially since it was dragging all of space and time toward it. Reality melted. The air tasted of cold glass mixed in mint and piss. Adam lurched. He let out a ragged cry as he flared his wings so hard the skin ripped free from his back. He kept straining. His wings snapped. The Stranger pulled, disregarding the Dreamtaker’s warning. The serpentine amalgamation lashed across space. But the Stranger pulled again, and Adam was so close to its massive maw, to all the eyes and teeth and—

Something exploded inside Adam Arrow.

Wings of the Starhawk 100 > 101 (Skill Evolution Reached)

Skill Evolution: Wings of the Starhawk (Adept) > Vectors of the Eternal Ascent (Heroic)

Vectors of the Eternal Ascent > 101

His wings exploded. The fiery plumage of the Starhawk faded as six solid, white-hot geometric shapes shone free from the fading flame. They resembled inverted pyramids, and they hovered in threes to Adam’s left and right. And as he commanded himself to move, he into motion, shooting free from the Stranger's grasp and zipping across the land. Friction and air peeled around his wings. His flight was utterly silent, without noise or any kind of strain. In fact, he felt lighter than light. This flight was effortless, and he hit his maximum speed as soon as he beat his wings. There was also the detail of how he flew without .

the Stranger cried out.

It reached out to snatch Adam with its many hands. Its eyes flared with colorful brightness, and Adam twisted left hard, preparing to brace against the brutal g-forces. G-forces that never came. The Gate Lord blinked. His wings were absolutely quiet, emitted no force, and carried him across kilometers of space in a half-second. The world slowed around him, and even as he reached out, he felt no friction. In fact, it felt like the horizon was zooming to greet him of its own accord.

He continued firing his arrows, and another of his skills drew closer to the brink.

Bowslinger 99 > 100 (Skill Evolution Imminent)

He slipped between the massive gaps in the Dreamtaker’s body, doing his best not to look at the glowing brightness. Unlike with the Stranger, the Dreamtaker didn’t try to attack him. The many-feathered serpents widened themselves, allowing him to pass. He prepared to decelerate as he approached Uva—only to stop immediately without strain at all.

Adam blinked at his new wings in awe and disbelief. “What the hells did I just get?”

Then, another notification appeared before him.

Feat slot unlocked!

Feats :

None

Lord Scorn is throwing a tantrum.

Lord Scorn is calling whoever detonated the Animancy Core in his realm a series of slurs.

Lord Scorn requests that the System convey that the attacker is going to be sodomized by the largest, sharpest piece of obsidian he can find in his dimension.

Two Heroic-Tier Skills got him a Feat slot. Adam’s astonishment grew—and his disgust did immediately after. The System. It weakened the veil deliberately to provoke this final jump—all just for this. It wasn’t trying to torture him—it was torturing him with even more conflict to make him grow stronger—to push him over that final threshold.

As he looked upon Uva, he saw that her body was utterly flaccid. She bounced and shook in the air, more like a flag than a person.

Outside, a clash of colors shook Gate Theborn as the Dreamtaker and Stranger launched nonsense sentences at each other.

“Uva,” Adam said, reaching out to grasp the Umbral. She spooled over his hands bonelessly. Light continued to spill forth from her eyes. Just looking at the light for too long made Adam’s vision go double.

Removing mana boundary to semi-Integrated dimensions.

“What? Fucking why?” Adam cried. The surrounding eldritch colors grew brighter. The orochi-like body of the Dreamtaker slithered and shook as it was dragged across reality by the Stranger. Between the gaps of the many feathered serpents, he saw a wall of reaching hands lined with eyes curving around the outside. He saw the fabric of this reality break away, and he shifted his gaze back to Uva just as his sanity trembled.

Then, he remembered something. In his raw terror, he forgot that he was He reached out to the mana core. He barely had time to examine its skills, but he knew one thing he could do. He willed it to channel the fullness of its cryomancy, and a beam of frost crashed down on the stranger.

But rather than doing any harm, the Stranger—or perhaps another one of its offspring—simply directed a few of its eyes upward, and a roiling spray of ethereal colors split through the stream of Cryomancy. The stranger's colors splashed into the mana core, and Adam cried out. He felt something pour into his very soul. He was synchronized to the core, and now the entity was striking him through it. It immediately filled with such discordant colors. His white-hot vectors began to flood with darkness, fill with eyes, and something gripped Gate Lord Adam Arrow from within his very soul.

Vectors of the Eternal Ascent > DID YOU THINK YOU COULD FLEE FROM ME ARROW-VERMIN-VESSEL-MURDERER?

“Oh, for fuc—” Adam’s words turned into a howl of anguish as Stranger started pouring its essence into him.